And doggone it, I can be a senator
By: Daniel Libit April 1, 2009 04:19 AM EDT

Al Franken vowed over the weekend that, sooner or later, he will be seated in the U.S. Senate.

It will take Tuesday's long-awaited ruling from a three-judge panel, an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, maybe a swing through the U.S. Supreme Court and possibly a separate journey through the federal court system.

And if all that works in Franken’s favor — well, that will be the easy part. Because even assuming he ultimately defeats Norm Coleman, Franken will still have to convince his new colleagues that he’s not just a celebrity.

“He is going to have a lot to prove,” says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker, “not only because of where he came from but by the means with which he got there. Republicans are going to regard him almost in the same way as Roland Burris, and clearly he is not.”

“Like all the celebrities that came before him, Al Franken is going to have to demonstrate he’s not using the U.S. Senate as another stage,” Baker says.

Celebrities-turned-members have mixed records on the Hill.

Ben Jones, famous for playing Cooter on the “The Dukes of Hazzard,” served two terms in the House as a Democrat from Georgia. His greatest significance might have been losing in a 1994 race to another Peach State lawmaker named Newt Gingrich.

Fred Grandy, who played Gopher on the TV series “The Love Boat,” eked out four terms in the House as a Republican from Iowa but had a similarly unremarkable legislative career.

The proof: They’re both still known best as the characters they played on TV.

What is true for any member is particularly true for a famous one: You have to “roll up your sleeves,” says Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), who was married to the late entertainer-cum-congressman Sonny Bono. “It depends on the nature of your celebrity, what your public persona was when you came into office.”

Bono Mack thinks that, for someone with Franken’s background as a comedian and satirist, “it’s a little more difficult” than it might be for other famous freshmen.

“If he had been out there playing Moses, it would have been easier,” she says. “But few people go into entertainment thinking they are going to run for office one day.”

Not all celebrities-turned-members come from the entertainment world, of course. Hillary Clinton was famous for being first lady when she arrived in the Senate, where she started off away from the camera lights, immersing herself in Armed Services Committee work.

“When Hillary entered the Senate, she had a different set of strategic imperatives,” says Democratic strategist Phil Singer, who served as spokesman for her presidential campaign.

“She was already perceived as a serious policy person, and she didn’t have to establish her bona fides in that regard,” he says. “She had to be careful not to upstage other members in the body who had already assembled lengthy résumés.”

Singer argues that Franken will need to do his rolled-up-sleeves work in a more public way — to “demonstrate he is a serious student in policy.”

American Enterprise Institute scholar Norm Ornstein, a Franken ally, says Clinton followed the model set by former National Basketball Association star Bill Bradley, whom he regards as the paragon of the celeb-to-legislator transition.

“He came in as a major-league celebrity,” Ornstein says of Bradley, “and basically buckled down, stayed out of the limelight, did his committee work, did his homework and, over [the] ... first year, impressed his colleagues as somebody who was smart, thoughtful and a workhorse. And that was the buzz around then.”

Eventually, Ornstein says, Bradley was able to leverage his legislative reputation, in addition to his famous name, to help prop up bills sponsored by his colleagues. He also took up the causes of some fairly esoteric policy initiatives, such as Third World debt.

On the other side of the Capitol, former pro-football player Jack Kemp, a Republican from New York, gained a reputation as a workhorse during his time in the House. And in Kemp’s case, his previous high-profile job gave him more than mere name recognition.

“Because he had been in a sport and in a locker room that was thoroughly integrated and had a lot of friends in the African-American community, when he said things that fit his conservative economics, he was given more attention,” says Ornstein. “People didn’t see him as having a racial bias.”

All things considered, it’s better to come to Congress as a famous former athlete than as a famous former entertainer.

“Hollywood touches off partisan nerves,” says Singer. “It’s not like Republicans and Democrats divide along party lines when it comes to evaluating Eli Manning’s performance on the field.”

Former University of Nebraska coaching icon Tom Osborne, who rode his Cornhuskers glory to the House in 2001, says sports helped him bond with the Republican speaker at the time: Dennis Hastert of Illinois, himself a former coach.

As for the rest of the chamber, Osborne says, “whatever advantage and benefits there might have been [to being a celebrity], ... after two or three months, you are kind of part of the furniture and people don’t make a big deal about it.”

In the current Senate, only Republican Jim Bunning came to Congress — initially the House, in 1987 — with apolitical celebrity. Bunning was a Hall of Fame pitcher who spent 15 seasons in the major leagues before he began a second career in politics. Bunning now finds himself on the outs with his party leadership, in need of more than a canny curveball.

Baker thinks the Kentucky lawmaker did little to establish himself early on in his congressional career.

But the biggest senatorial celebrity flop, according to both Baker and Ornstein, is the man who paved the way for performers such as Franken to even fathom a career in politics. That would be former singer and actor George Murphy, who was elected to the Senate, from California, in 1965. Ronald Reagan anointed Murphy his professional forerunner.

Murphy “was a very engaging guy,” says Baker, “but a rather undistinguished senator.”

Ornstein concurs, calling Murphy “not particularly thoughtful.”

Conversely, former Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) was initially regarded as merely being Elizabeth Taylor’s husband when he was elected in 1979. But he came to gain a reputation for being schooled in defense policy and for playing the important role of bridge senator.

“I think he really understood how important it was to have an intermediate group of senators who could talk to both sides,” says Baker. “He earned a lot of respect because he was a good listener.”